The Camden Eye — Restaurant in London

Extremely Unprofessional and Disrespectful Security – Ruined Our Night

I visited this venue tonight with friends for what was meant to be a relaxed evening. The place itself was quite run-down, the music was awful, and the crowd was not great – but we decided to stay for a drink. Upon entering, we showed our IDs multiple times and had no issues initially. The venue wasn’t even busy, which in hindsight, makes sense.

At some point, I stepped out briefly to buy something, leaving my purse (with my ID) inside with my friends. When I returned, the security guard – who had already come across as rude and defensive earlier in the night – refused to let me back in. He had seen me entering and exiting for a smoke before, so it was clear I had already been inside.

I explained the situation and pointed to my friends sitting right by the window with my purse, but he mocked me and acted as though he didn’t believe me. I told him I would ask my friends to bring my ID out, which they did. Even after they showed him my ID, he still denied my re-entry — and even worse, he then refused to let any of us back in, even though my friends only stepped out to help clarify the situation.

He claimed the venue was now "closed", yet this was clearly just an excuse, as we had drinks and personal belongings still inside.

Eventually, I had to involve the manager of the pub, who was actually very kind and understanding. Thankfully, they helped us recover our belongings. I didn’t want to escalate things, but the behavior of the security staff was unacceptable — it felt like a clear abuse of power for no reason. We were respectful customers who had spent money at the venue and caused zero disruption.

This experience completely ruined our night. I won’t be returning to this place and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. The unprofessionalism at the door speaks volumes about how little they value...

Four floors of rough and ready pub/venue space within three seconds of walking out of Camden tube station. The smoking area - the street outside, with roving homeless people and the general active tourist trap atmosphere of camden tube stationz without any ashtrays or anywhere to put a drink down... it could do with some work, and is a fairly hostile environment during winter. People were having trouble securing their bags and coats while taking the mission, and usually elected to leave totally rather than stay to finish their drink inside. The plastic cups routine of having to decant drinks to smoke a cigarette outside is also an unfortunate chore, as is the license-ensuring bouncer setup on the door. All pubs now seem to have bouncers micromanaging the public over trivial issues of non-safety, and the no glassware health & safety shuffle is a far cry from "the good old days" when camden was famous for its party scene - a long time ago.

In all honesty, licensing has become prohibitive to any form of enjoyment or freedom, and the idea that public safety is the genuine priority seems basically unlikely - we are dealing with a climate of abusive supervision and control. Nonetheless, this example of a Camden pub makeover is about the most informal situation that we'll see these days for the moment, unfortunately, and compared to most venues the level of red tape and annoyance seems mild to unobtrusive. A rarity in...

Was excited to try this pub for the number of vegan options on offer. Had a table upstairs where it was empty other than one other table - went down to order food at the bar and my bad hadn’t noticed my table number. I politely tried to describe which table it was (as there was only 5 tables upstairs) ‘long table, by the window in the middle of the room’ and didn’t think there would be an issue as it was basically empty upstairs anyway. However, the person at the bar had so much attitude and just huffed and rudely instructed ‘just go upstairs and find out the number’ and walked off. If the table number was that important for an empty upstairs and they’d asked me nicely if I could double check the table number that would’ve been fine but this interaction was really poor customer service. I ended up going back upstairs getting my friend and leaving to go to a different food place. I’ve worked in customer service roles and know it can be rough but when the customer is being friendly and you just give them attitude and a rude response for no reason it really ruins the experience and loses you customers. Really disappointing experience to start my year of ‘trying new places’ as I would never return or recommend...